Crocodilians 

You may be aware of the terrifying crocodilian family.  You can find them in the Southern United States, South America, Africa, or even Southeast Asia. Whether you’ve seen an alligator, caiman, gharial, or crocodile online or in person, you can consider them all crocodilians in general. Now what’s truly fascinating about these absolute powerhouses of reptilians is how old they truly are. 

Crocodilians have been around since 200 million years ago during the Mesozoic epoch, since then they’ve been incredible survivalists outlasting the dinosaurs. But, how did these swamp puppies manage to survive such a mass extinction event such as the asteroid that ended the reign of the mighty dinosaurs during the late Cretaceous period? How did they manage to make it through the harsh cold ice age?

First, we have to dive into the biology of these reptiles.  Crocodilians have strong immune systems protecting them from fatal diseases that they may get from injuries or murky waters and they never really get sick because of this. Crocodilians also have an extremely slow metabolism. They only eat about every 3 to 10 days and can live a full year without eating at all! 

Since the asteroid crashed into earth and the volcanic eruptions caused mass climate change, plants began to perish, along with the herbivores that ate said plants, and finally the carnivores died too with the lack of herbivores to eat. So, the world was pretty scarce of food. 

However, the crocodilians just side-eyed this and continued to thrive and reproduce during that time ultimately managing to make it through the mass extinction thanks to their metabolisms. 

Now, the ice age seemingly is a problem for a cold-blooded reptile like the alligator right? Yes, but there’s a catch. When someone thinks of the ice age, usually they will think of the entire planet completely covered in ice. However, that is not the case because some parts of the world still have suitable environments where crocodiles, alligators, or other animals can live perfectly fine. 

So to counter this they simply just lived in areas where the ice age hadn't drastically affected them.This is seen today in that Alligators specifically have a coping method during the winter: they lower their metabolic rate and proceed to keep their snouts above the freezing waters. As long as they stay under water they will not freeze, so this is how they manage to survive cold environments for some period of time.

Last but not least, crocodilians did not really evolve that much through these millions of years. They were practically perfect predators from the start and are built like tanks. Crocodilians are ambush hunters; they simply wait for their prey to get close enough to the water to where all they have to do is snatch them for their weekly meal. 

Not to mention they are a lot more agile than you may expect, they can move in short bursts in speeds to attack but they can reach up to 22 mph in the water and run up to 15 mph. To complement their surprisingly decent speeds they have pretty much no predators due to their large sizes and tough, scaly skin. 

The most terrifying part of a crocodile is its astronomically devastating bite force. As the animal with the largest bite force in the WORLD as of today, the saltwater crocodile can bite up to 3,700 psi! That’s more than enough to “pop your head like a grape” says Coyote Peterson.

Crocodilians are truly fascinating creatures. They manage to live through millions of years without a care in the world of what happens around them. They are one of the top predators in the world and are very successful in the animal kingdom. If you ever see one be sure to stay a while and admire the awesome reptile. From a safe distance of course.